Tesla's Stock Falls After News About Autopilot Crashes and Battery Fires (cnbc.com) 204
CNBC reports:
Tesla shares fell almost 8% on Friday to their lowest close since December 2016, after the National Transportation Safety Board said the company's Autopilot driver assistance system was engaged during a fatal crash in March... The accident was at least the third of its kind in the U.S. and raises concerns about Tesla's Autopilot technology.
Thursday Elon Musk also told Tesla's employees that he and their CFO will now personally review all expenses going forward in a new "hardcore" attempt to control expenses, calling it "the only way for Tesla to become financially sustainable and succeed in our goal of helping make the world environmentally sustainable."
And then there's the fires, reports CNBC: Recent reports of Tesla vehicles spontaneously catching fire could make potential customers wary at a time when virtually every automaker is getting ready to roll out battery-based vehicles, industry executives and analysts worry... Three of Tesla's sedans went up in flames without warning in recent months, one in Shanghai, another in Hong Kong, a third in San Francisco. Tesla has experienced at least 14 known battery fires in recent years...
Of the 14 known fires involving Tesla vehicles, the majority occurred after a collision, but there have been a growing number of blazes in which its products appear to spontaneously ignite. That appeared to be the case when, on April 21, a security camera in a Shanghai garage captured images of a Model S sedan smoldering before suddenly bursting into flames. Another fire engulfed a Tesla sedan that appears to have been hooked up to one of the company's Superchargers in Hong Kong. Then, two weeks ago, firefighters in San Francisco tweeted that they had been called to a garage where another Tesla Model S was on fire.
In an initial response, the automaker said it did not think the sedan itself was responsible for the California blaze. But it is investigating the two Chinese incidents, it said in a statement, and "out of an abundance of caution, we are revising charge and thermal management settings on Model S and Model X vehicles via an over-the-air software update that will begin rolling out today, to help further protect the battery and improve battery longevity..."
"As the face of the emerging battery-car market, Tesla's troubles have been widely reported, but it is by no means the only manufacturer to have experienced unexpected fires..." reports CNBC.
"Fires have been reported with Chevrolet Volts, Fisker Karmas, Mitsubishi iMiEVs and other electric vehicles."
Thursday Elon Musk also told Tesla's employees that he and their CFO will now personally review all expenses going forward in a new "hardcore" attempt to control expenses, calling it "the only way for Tesla to become financially sustainable and succeed in our goal of helping make the world environmentally sustainable."
And then there's the fires, reports CNBC: Recent reports of Tesla vehicles spontaneously catching fire could make potential customers wary at a time when virtually every automaker is getting ready to roll out battery-based vehicles, industry executives and analysts worry... Three of Tesla's sedans went up in flames without warning in recent months, one in Shanghai, another in Hong Kong, a third in San Francisco. Tesla has experienced at least 14 known battery fires in recent years...
Of the 14 known fires involving Tesla vehicles, the majority occurred after a collision, but there have been a growing number of blazes in which its products appear to spontaneously ignite. That appeared to be the case when, on April 21, a security camera in a Shanghai garage captured images of a Model S sedan smoldering before suddenly bursting into flames. Another fire engulfed a Tesla sedan that appears to have been hooked up to one of the company's Superchargers in Hong Kong. Then, two weeks ago, firefighters in San Francisco tweeted that they had been called to a garage where another Tesla Model S was on fire.
In an initial response, the automaker said it did not think the sedan itself was responsible for the California blaze. But it is investigating the two Chinese incidents, it said in a statement, and "out of an abundance of caution, we are revising charge and thermal management settings on Model S and Model X vehicles via an over-the-air software update that will begin rolling out today, to help further protect the battery and improve battery longevity..."
"As the face of the emerging battery-car market, Tesla's troubles have been widely reported, but it is by no means the only manufacturer to have experienced unexpected fires..." reports CNBC.
"Fires have been reported with Chevrolet Volts, Fisker Karmas, Mitsubishi iMiEVs and other electric vehicles."
Tesla stock falls... (Score:5, Insightful)
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"...because it was wildly overvalued to begin with?"
Nah, that can't possibly be the reason....
*** sarcasmometer explodes ***
Re:Tesla stock falls... (Score:4, Insightful)
The important criteria is not whether a few people die or not, but whether Tesla's tech is statistically safer overall compared to human drivers. There is too much hype and hysteria in both directions to know the truth.
But people need to have realistic expectations. You need to crack some eggs to make an omelet, and people are going to die in self-driving cars. But 3000 people PER DAY die in human driven cars, so we need to keep some perspective.
Disclaimer: My spouse drives a Tesla, uses Autopilot everyday, and isn't dead yet.
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Re:Tesla stock falls... (Score:4, Insightful)
Juries are looking only at the incident in front of them and the injured party in front of them. If the quadriplegic or the four preschool orphans in front of them are in that state because of a software or hardware flaw (or even just a cost cutting measure to reduce manufacturing costs) in a self-driving or aggressive "driver assist" system, the statistics are pretty much immaterial. I don't, for example, think that juries that would have heard cases about the 737-MAX crashes had they occurred in the US would put much weight in an argument by Boeing that "Yes, our software kind of sucked, but it was still safer to fly a 737-MAX with mediocre pilots than drive to your destination, so don't find Boeing liable".
Juries can relate to an accident caused by a moment of human inattention or a situation that required looking two places at once to resolve (since humans only have one set of eyes) and have little training. After all, juries are human and each juror has only one set of eyes and has sometimes performed sub-optimally when distracted or tired. Also, even if juries are not sympathetic, most individuals being held liable for their driving lapses don't have many millions of dollars of assets or have millions of dollars of insurance coverage so even if an award is absurdly large, most of it will never get paid and the economy as a whole does not feel much impact.
I'm not so sure that juries will relate the same way to software and hardware that a big company with billions in annual revenue spent billions developing. When the line of code, or the missing case in the training data, or a decision to reduce costs by omitting LIDAR is laid out in black and white by the plaintiff, jurors are much more likely to empty the deep pockets of the big company.
Unless federal legislation is enacted which severely limits liability of auto manufacturers for flaws (or perceived flaws) in self-driving cars, I don't see level 5 or very useful level 4 cars being widely available for use on surface streets in the next thirty years. Perhaps, though, they will be available for use on a limited number of controlled access roads which have been carefully marked, maintained, monitored and (perhaps) even have dedicated lanes for self-driving cars -- but that severely reduces the market for self-driving cars.
Re:Tesla stock falls... (Score:5, Interesting)
Granted, 100% of people think they are above average drivers. However, we have a whole industry built around the basis that not everyone is the same statistical risk. My insurance company judges me to be a lot less risk than i was when i was 20 years ago.
It seems to me that while people may not be a good judge of where they fall on the risk scale, that some of the drivers are actually above average. It's true that there is some risk that my driving ability can't reduce. There is always the chance that some drunk will plow into my lane head on and take me out. I never see the numbers on exactly what that statistic is though. I only see the total number of traffic fatalities. I suspect there's a disproportionate number of below average drivers involved in those fatalities.
If the baseline for safe is just the rate of accidents for human drivers, it's probably safer for a bad driver to be riding in one of these, but a good driver may very well be increasing their risk.
Re: Tesla stock falls... (Score:4, Interesting)
I rode in an autopiloted Tesla a few weeks ago. Sure, I survived, but I was not very impressed with the technology. It made some boneheaded moves, such as driving in another vehicle's blind spot, abruptly slowing down when it should have sped up to avoid a truck pulling a trailer behind us that was sliding a little bit into our lane during a curve in the road, etc...
I presume what Tesla is doing is using all these early adopters as test monkeys to provide data for further training of the AI... Why anyone would want to pay $8K to be a crash test dummy is beyond me.
Re: Tesla stock falls... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Tesla stock falls... (Score:2)
To be fair, I see a lot of drivers of $80k cars in this city make bonehead moves on their own all the time and they never cop to those either. Maybe the problem isn't the car.
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We've all seen the viral videos of Tesla owners asleep at the wheel and not crashing/dying:
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
Why isn't Tesla stock surging because of this? Oh, right, mass media. If it doesn't bleed? It doesn't lead.
Yeah, it's like why do we never hear about all the 737s that make millions of safe flights, but 2 max's crash and ground the whole show? Ridiculous that product doing what it's supposed to doesn't make the news.
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Yeah, it's like why do we never hear about all the 737s that make millions of safe flights, but 2 max's crash and ground the whole show? Ridiculous that product doing what it's supposed to doesn't make the news.
Not a good analogy because there aren't millions of manual-control 737s flying around piloted by semi-trained pilots.
If there were, those 'faulty' 737s might be a hell of a lot safer that the manual-control versions. Flaws and all!
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Because there usually aren't thousands of planes, all stuck at the same altitude (like cars stuck at ground level), within the same square mile of space ?
787Max sucks (Score:2)
The millions of hours flown safely are on previous generations of the 737. The Max has only been flying for less than a year and already has 2 crashes caused by manufacturing defects. Thats a worse record than any plane manufactured since WW2.
Re:Tesla stock falls... (Score:4, Interesting)
There is a sizable portion of the population who is afraid of technology taking over. They have emotional interest in Tesla not succeeding, Ether because they don't want to see electric cars from being popular "Because they just don't want to see the Greenies win" or Auto Pilot, because much of American Culture (especially baby boomers) centered around the romantic idea of driving. Their jobs may suck and be micromanaged, at home their lives center around the family and kids needs, but you can always go in your car, where you have control and are empowered. Self Driving cars, seems like a tool to dis-empower people.
Now the Autopilot feature, is not a self driving car. It keeps you in your lane and prevents you from running off the road, or hitting the car in front of you. Having driven long strips of road, with no stopping allowed for 30+ miles, such a feature really can cut down on eyestrain, and general exhaustion. Not saying I would be closing my eyes and going to sleep at the wheel. but it would allow me to change my focus, readjust my seating position, and giving my reaction time a few more seconds.
So did Ford and the others... (Score:3)
Standard disclaimer - not financial advice, not qualified to give, this advice is worth what you paid for it etc.
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Ford lost 1%. That's not 8%.
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Ford lost 1%. That's not 8%.
So ford fell too?
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This seems trade war-related, not specific to the speculation in the summary. All the car manufacturers fell.
While that's affecting the overall market, Tesla's problems are Tesla's. They've been in a cash crunch for years now, just barely scraping by each quarter for so long it's ridiculous. Things were looking up after Q4, but they sold 30% fewer cars in Q1 than Q4, suggesting Q4 was just pre-order backlog and not sustained interest.
Tesla stock price is a bet on whether they will survive to become the size of Ford. News that suggests they're about to run out of cash to operate yet again, if that's how you read
"The Chinese incidents" (Score:2, Troll)
It wouldn't surprise me if the "Chinese incidents" were sponsored by high-ranking CCP officials through their operatives, to make Chinese electric car makers more competitive. Let's not forget that Tesla is the #1 electric car manufacturer globally by a large margin. Tesla has a huge target painted on them, and CCP is unscrupulous. Compared to Falun Gong practitioners' organ harvesting, this is nothing.
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Lazy reporters should do their job and follow the money.
One person killed. How many died driving normal cars during that period? A hundred times more? Thousands? Tens of thousands worldwide?
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One person killed. How many died driving normal cars during that period? A hundred times more? Thousands? Tens of thousands worldwide?
Oh, this goes back to one of the oldest rules in journalism . . . :
Dog bites man! : Not news.
Man bites dog! : News!
The big two US automakers think that, with their manufacturing expertise, they can build Teslas better and cheaper than Tesla. That's why they would like to see Tesla crater, so they cam scrape up all the Tesla IP at pennies on the dollar.
So who is backing all the Tesla shorters . . . ? That would be interesting to see.
It's about the supply chain (Score:4, Interesting)
The big two US automakers think that, with their manufacturing expertise, they can build Teslas better and cheaper than Tesla.
Not quite. Ford and GM would rather not have to build electric vehicles at all. Tesla has forced them in that direction but they really aren't well set up to make BEVs. They haven't invested in battery technology adequately and more importantly they haven't built the secured supply chain necessary to build BEVs in serious volume. THAT is why they are delaying as hard as they can. They have excellent capabilities for assembly but they haven't invested in the supply chain necessary to really bring BEVs to market in a big way. They are relying on third parties for the batteries in most cases and that is going to bite them in the ass hard.
Worse, they have huge investments in ICE engineering and supply chains and most of their engineers aren't up to speed on EV motors and batteries and software. I make wire harnesses for a living and I've worked with all of the big three on wiring. They are ridiculously far behind state of the art and good practices for almost everything electronic in their vehicles. They design bespoke harnesses for every vehicle they make, have virtually no standards for terminals or connectors or hardware or designs (with huge added cost mind you), their engineering of electronics is a hot mess often done by people who have no idea how to do it properly and efficiently, they routinely do things to save a few pennies now which cost dollars later on, etc. And their software prowess is shockingly bad.
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CARB, as odious as they sometimes are, has not forced anyone to buy a Tesla or any other BEV. Although, CARB may have helped created an opportunity for Tesla in terms of investors being somewhat more willing to invest in a BEV company with the expectation that CARB et al will penalize ICE cars in various ways.
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That's simply not true. As far as I'm aware, no Tesla car has ever been sold at a loss.
Tesla as a company is losing money because they are taking on debt to build the infrastructure required for future sales and market expansion. Where major auto manufacturers can just switch a line from building gas-guzzlers to building EVs by retooling the drive train bits, Tesla actually has to build the facilities to do their manufacturi
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A decent percentage of Tesla's SG&A expenses are effectively capital expenditures, whether you want to call them that or not. They're the cost of staffing up in new markets, plus starting the ramp up for production of the Model Y. Using COGS + SG&A grossly distorts the profitability of most startups, making it a relatively poor metric for evaluating a company in a rapid growth period.
Frankly, COGS by itself is a better metric.
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It wouldn't surprise me if the "Chinese incidents" were sponsored by high-ranking CCP officials through their operatives, to make Chinese electric car makers more competitive. Let's not forget that Tesla is the #1 electric car manufacturer globally by a large margin. Tesla has a huge target painted on them, and CCP is unscrupulous. Compared to Falun Gong practitioners' organ harvesting, this is nothing.
Yep. If you watch the video of the "fires" it looks staged, nothing like a lithium battery fire.
Besides, a wholew load of gasoline cars have also burst into flames in the same period. Where's the headline news stories on those?
Re:"The Chinese incidents" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"The Chinese incidents" (Score:5, Funny)
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There's nothing convenient about the over 200 million CCTV cameras installed in China. And that's only the government released numbers and doesn't count private company / 3rd party operated cameras.
If you own a car in China it is conveniently well positioned in a frame somewhere right now!
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Let's not forget that Tesla is the #1 electric car manufacturer globally by a large margin.
So? Tesla built 245,000 cars last year. That's one week of production for Toyota, alone. Being the dominant player in a tiny, sliver of a niche of the overall market really doesn't mean anything.
Furthermore, they WERE the #1 electric car manufacturer. BYD builds more than they do [bloomberg.com], by a solid 50% (30K/month versus 20K/month), and it's growing quite fast. Both are bit players in the market, but Tesla became and even smaller bit player...
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I'm sure all manufacturers are eyeing Tesla's market share. But let's face it, whatever dirty tricks you accuse China of you could equally accuse the US of, and at least in the latter case we have some evidence that they are true.
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But let's face it, whatever dirty tricks you accuse China of you could equally accuse the US of, and at least in the latter case we have some evidence that they are true.
I also mentioned organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners (as well as other inmates). Does the US do anything comparable?
Does the US government control all the major manufacturers, like the CCP does in China?
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Nearly all of BYDs sales are plug-in hybrids, not BEVs. Last year, BYD sold 103,263 BEVs [insideevs.com]. Their BEV sales are NOT larger than Tesla.
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They led the list for one month. Your original claim was that they had massively outsold Tesla. Yes, they outsold Tesla in the quarter where Tesla sales were massively and temporarily down. And maybe they are catching up. But that still doesn't make the original claim valid.
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14 battery fires in recent years... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm reading online that Tesla has 532'000 cars sold.
14 battery fires is somewhere around two thousandths of a percent. I think we can chalk them up as freak occurrences.
But a headline is a headline, amirite?
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Autopilot is the bigger issue. It's just been nerfed in the EU and Japan by new UN standards that limit the amount of steering it can do, and most of the advanced features (like enhanced summon, navigate on autopilot, no confirmation lane changing etc.) have never been available in those regions anyway.
FWIW this also affects Audi's self driving systems too.
Re:14 battery fires in recent years... (Score:5, Insightful)
I have never thought that autopilot was actual self-driving capability. At this point, anybody using it like that deserves everything they have coming for them.
Sute, if autopilot is a big selling point for a lot of people, then the stuck downturn probably even makes some sense. I'm just saying if it ever was a selling point to somebody, that person needs to be taken out back and shot for the good of mankind. (personal opinion, though)
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Edit for stupid typos:
I have never thought that autopilot was actual self-driving capability. At this point, anybody using it like that deserves everything they have coming for them.
Sure, if autopilot is a big selling point for a lot of people, then the stock downturn probably even makes some sense. I'm just saying if it ever was a selling point to somebody, that person needs to be taken out back and shot for the good of mankind. (personal opinion, though)
Re:14 battery fires in recent years... (Score:5, Insightful)
Tesla literally calls it "full self driving" now. It's still level 2 driver aids but that's the name they have given to those features.
It's not just a selling point either, Tesla is betting on it as a major source of revenue in the near future. At the recent "autonomy day" investor event Musk promised that they would have "feature complete" level 5 robocars this year, and start up a robotaxi service next year.
Tesla asked investors to give them money on the basis of having a revenue-generating robotaxi service running by next year. Full driverless taxi service.
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Considering hey made the same promise in 2017, I doubt it.
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Their current system was just "upgraded" to recognize traffic lights. It still doesn't even recognize traffic signs! I'll never understand why people would think that FSD is less than a year away (especially by Tesla). There is no evidence it will ever work.
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That's something - it puts it ahead of Belgians & Italians.
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If you check their web site "autopilot" now refers to basic auto-steering. "Full Self Driving" now refers to things like auto-lane-changing. It's all level 2, but they started marketing it as "full self driving".
That was done because they started selling "full self driving" back in 2016. People with 4 year old cars who bought it are getting fed up waiting and if they don't deliver soon there will be lawsuits. So they changed the definition from "can drive across the country by itself" to "level 2 driver ass
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Following the philosophy that if you can't kick the ball far and high enough, just move the goalposts and declare success.
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I'm just saying if it ever was a selling point to somebody, that person needs to be taken out back and shot for the good of mankind. (personal opinion, though)
Out back would get really full . . . really fast.
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and most of the advanced features (like enhanced summon, navigate on autopilot, no confirmation lane changing etc.) have never been available in those regions anyway.
Autopilot (or rather: Enhanced Autopilot) has been tweaked rather than nerfed in Europe, and it still varies per country. No Confirmation Lane Change doesn't seem to be enabled, but Dutch Model 3 drivers report that Navigate on Autopilot is available, though you have to confirm lane changes and NOA cuts out the second you cross the border into Belgium...
This regulatory stuff might affect other automakers a lot more than Tesla though. Thus far Tesla has handled these challenges with simple OTA software
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Other car manufacturers either do OTA updates (e.g. Audi) or they got their systems type-approved up front (Nissan, Kia, Hyundai).
The EU is looking to harmonize the standards so that you don't get the issue with features cutting out as you cross borders, so have selected the UN standard to start with. As such, Dutch drivers will get their EAP nerfed soon. In fact all Teslas in the EU will, because the current software exceeds the limit on steering input.
Basically level 2 systems like Tesla Autopilot are not
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All these incidents of spontaneous fires are fairly recent though, which could mean a quality control issue which is kind of worrying.
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It COULD in the sense that the complexity of DNA COULD point to there being a God.
The sample size is way too small and the timeframe way too short to make assumptions over quality issues.
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That's a problem. But not nearly as much of a problem as the fact they can't agree on who/what "god" is and what he/she/it believes in and which prophet speaks for him/her/it.
On second thought, perhaps it's better this way -- hopefully they will eventually kill enough of each other in religiously motivated conflicts that they will no longer be the majority and we can enter "the age of logic and reason".
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I'm reading online that Tesla has 532'000 cars sold.
14 battery fires is somewhere around two thousandths of a percent. I think we can chalk them up as freak occurrences.
But a headline is a headline, amirite?
Headlines are based on either lies, damn lies, or statistics. While I agree the headline is sensational your analysis of the situation is falls under damn lies or statistics.
The total is interesting when considering how overall safe something is.
The trend is interesting when considering how quality control is being handled, are there more now than there were in the past?
The type is interesting for identifying root causes. 11 of the past fires have been the result of accidents. The other 3 were spontaneous.
Re: 14 battery fires in recent years... (Score:3, Insightful)
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What fraction of similarly aged gas-fueled cars have caught fire over the same time span? Usually, things like that become a problem when the car gets old. Or think back not very long to the Galaxy Note 7. What fraction of devices do you think can spontaneously combust before owners (or their neighbors) should start to worry?
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Yeah, how come this is front page and not the over 50 bmws that have randomly ignited while parked with the engine off. Tesla just gets all the FUD, wonder why?
https://abc7chicago.com/automotive/bmw-car-fires-more-fires-reported-in-parked-cars-while-engines-off/5121834/
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I'm reading online that Tesla has 532'000 cars sold.
14 battery fires is somewhere around two thousandths of a percent. I think we can chalk them up as freak occurrences.
But a headline is a headline, amirite?
Not in the car industry.
There were 17 significant cases of ignition fires for GM, the recall was 2.7 million vehicles. That was GM, who are known to be cowboys so most other manufacturers are better.
I once had a Honda Integra DC5, I had a recall notice when it was 9 years old for the brake master cylinder due to two failures, Honda replaced the brake master cylinder in every car that used that part (Would have been the Civics of the same age as well). No-one had died, but hundreds of thousands of cars
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I'm reading online that Tesla has 532'000 cars sold.
14 battery fires is somewhere around two thousandths of a percent. I think we can chalk them up as freak occurrences.
Absolute numbers are meaningless in quality control. The data needs to be normalized and compared. What percent of Toyota Camry's catch fire?
I have this problem all of the time. The customer service people say, "We have 50 failures of product X, and only 10 of product Y! You need to fix product X!"
When I look at the data, I find out we sold 100,000 of product X and only 5,000 of product Y. Product Y is actually 4 times worse than product X.
The reason the customer service group comes to me is beca
Re:14 battery fires in recent years... (Score:5, Insightful)
It does appear to be a significantly higher percentage that ICE car fires.
Really? On average, there were 202K passenger vehicle fires in the US between 2006-2010 [nfpa.org], resulting in an average of over 1000 injuries and nearly 300 deaths per year. Domestically, there are roughly 263M vehicles registered in the US [wikipedia.org], the vast majority of which are passenger vehicles. As such, the likelihood that a randomly selected passenger vehicle will suffer a car fire in any given year is roughly 0.077%. If we then calculate the cumulative probability of a fire over the median age of a passenger vehicle in the US (9.4 years, which I'll round down to 9 to be conservative; note: this disregards that older cars are almost certainly more likely to catch fire, but it'll still give us an idea of what sorts of numbers we're dealing with), that would suggest a lifetime incidence rate of roughly 0.689% over the lifetime of a passenger vehicle, meaning that for every 150 cars on the road in the US, about 1 of them will catch fire at some point in its life of operation.
Going by what the GP said, Tesla's 14 fires over 532K cars sold globally would suggest a lifetime incidence rate (to date) of roughly 0.00263%, or, put differently, that for every 38K Teslas sold globally about 1 will catch fire at some point in its life. We expect this number to continue growing for the next few years, since Teslas are still young and are likely to suffer more problems of this sort as they age, but even so, we're talking about a HUGE discrepancy here.
Re:14 battery fires in recent years... (Score:4, Insightful)
but if you are working on global tesla figures surely you should use global ice numbers as well... oh wait, you are trying to skew the figures
Yours is the sort of specious argument I've come to expect from immature trolls who lack experience creating and using estimations in the real world, otherwise you'd have realized how silly your accusation sounds. But hey, I've got time to kill, so let me outline some of the reasons it fails to hold water:
A) Global ICE figures for car fires aren’t consistently and reliably reported. I chose a large sample set that had good, consistently reported data available and should be representative enough for the purposes of our estimations here. If you can find a reliable source for global numbers, please, feel free to share.
B) I kept myself accountable by citing sources and acknowledging where and how bias was present. Inasmuch as skewing was unavoidable, I made it clear that I selected the option that skewed against Tesla. After all, I was expecting to demonstrate that Teslas are orders of magnitude less likely to catch fire, meaning that I shouldn't need cherry-pick numbers to help their case. Sure enough, despite my choice of numbers that favored ICE vehicles over Tesla, Tesla came out being hundreds of times safer by the numbers.
C) As I said, where I skewed, I skewed against Tesla. Globally we would expect safety standards to be lower than in an affluent, first-world country, so ICE car fires would likely be significantly more common if we were able to obtain global numbers. A reasonable expectation would be that the global numbers would make Tesla’s numbers look much better.
D) You've incorrectly assumed that we need global numbers to have an apples-to-apples comparison, but if what you want is an apples-to-apples comparison, that's easy: just use US numbers. From what I can gather, 8 of the Tesla fires have been in the US [wikipedia.org], and as of last month Tesla had sold 331,521 vehicles in the US [carsalesbase.com]. That would put their lifetime incidence rate at 0.00241%, which translates to 1 car fire for every 41.4K Teslas sold in the US. That's within a stone's throw of (and slightly better than) the 1 per 38K Teslas sold that I estimated in my last comment. Egads, I'm clearly out to skew things in Tesla's favor!
Adults understand that data will nearly always be imperfect, bias will nearly always be present, and estimations will nearly never be exact. The best we can typically do is work with what we've got, acknowledge bias, and, where unavoidable, make choices that will slant our data in ways that shouldn't matter for the purposes that the data is intended to serve.
I did all of those. If you think I was unfair in any way with the numbers, you have my sources, so feel free to pull together your own estimations from them. Or if you have a beef with any of my sources, feel free to cite your own and provide a better estimation.
I'm eagerly awaiting your revised numbers.
I don't see Tesla lasting as company (Score:2)
At least not under Musks rule. I doubt these battery fires will be the issue, the percentage of cars sold is tiny, the main problem with Tesla is it simply isn't making any money and it really should be by now. However whatever the outcome for the company they've shown what CAN be done with electric vehicles - ie they can be extremely fast and don't have to look like they were designed in a kids lego class and for that we have to thank them and Musk (dick though he is elsewhere in life) for showing that, an
Re:I see quite the opposite actually. (Score:2)
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What are you talking about? Every tech bro who gets rich starts a rocket company. Something to do with penis size I think. They all think they can escape the planet. And plus, Musks father was a millionaire.
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"I've literally been studying EVs since the late 1970s, and there was NO misunderstanding among people who know cars about whether EVs can be stylish and fast."
Good luck making a viable EV with 1970s battery technology. Milk floats or forklift trucks are your lot.
I know what's moving up (Score:2)
Popcorn's moving up!
(Almost) All car fires are "unexpected" (Score:2)
"As the face of the emerging battery-car market, Tesla's troubles have been widely reported, but it is by no means the only manufacturer to have experienced unexpected fires..."
Unless you are intentionally trying to set the car on fire by definition ALL car fires are unexpected. And there are FAR more [cnn.com] of them for ICE vehicles than for BEVs - to the point where BEV car fires are literally a rounding error. 174,000 car fires in 2015 and virtually all were ICE vehicles.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
They aren't reviewing "all" expenses (Score:2)
Thursday Elon Musk also told Tesla's employees that he and their CFO will now personally review all expenses going forward in a new "hardcore" attempt to control expenses
Speaking as an accountant I can say with certainty that it is literally not possible for the CEO of a company anywhere close to the size of Tesla to review "all expenses". The leadership team could review most/all expenses above a certain size but they literally don't have the time to review every paperclip purchase. Accounting simply doesn't work like that. Basically he would have to be having people report details to him that are already pre-filtered. And below a certain size companies don't have time
Tesla is the new Apple .... (Score:2)
The media is constantly focused squarely on every little thing they announce, change, tweet about, and anything somebody does with one of their products that they deem newsworthy. The name generates page views or eyeballs tuning in. Tesla has strong proponents with an almost religious fervor, as well as detractors who have money riding on the company failing.
That said? I own and drive a Tesla S myself, so I'm obviously concerned when reports start saying my car could suddenly catch fire.
As I read most of
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What they are is the next Enron and Theranos. If you donÃ(TM)t see that you are blind.
Enron? Maybe. Theranos? Provably not. Theranos had nothing that worked, Tesla is at least putting cars on the roads.
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Tesla is not only "putting cars on the roads" but has successfully sold a Roadster, the Model S, the Model X SUV, the Model 3, and now has a Model Y crossover coming out. That's a pretty decent track record for an automaker who only does all electric vehicles and who ALSO deployed several thousand public high-speed charging stations around the entire world so you can actually use them on longer road trips without concerns.
I sure didn't pay anywhere near 6 figures for my Model S. I went with a used one, and
Approx. 171,500 vechicle fires in the US each year (Score:2)
But when a Tesla has an accident or a fire OMFG! A TESLA ACCIDENT!!! Seriously, the anti-EV propaganda from US car makers and oil companies is out of control.
FEMA stats:
"Each year, from 2014 to 2016, an estimated 171,500 highway vehicle fires occurred in the United States, resulting in an annual average of 345 deaths; 1,300 injuries; and $1.1 billion in property loss."
https://www.usfa.fema.gov/down... [fema.gov]
The problem with Autopilot... (Score:4, Interesting)
The history of automobiles (Score:3)
Take a look back over the century of the history of the automobile, and try to contemplate the number of people who have died as the technology was developed. How many people died from brake failure before cars had hydraulic brakes coupled with a redundant mechanically linked emergency brake? Or before tires had steel belts in them. Or safety glass. Specific car models, like the Ford Pinto, that would essentially explode like a bomb when rear-ended because the fuel tank was unprotected.
Hundreds of thousands, if not a million deaths, as the industry developed and learned and were regulated. If the automobile did not already exist, and given today's news reporting and the weak stomach of society to take risk for the sake of advancement, I don't see how automobile could ever come into being at this point in time.
The fact that every last case and piece of information can now be reported and disseminated to the masses (and, for some reason, IS reported for specific entities such as Tesla) doesn't mean it has to be. Right now, people are dying in car accidents in non-Tesla vehicles due to flaws in those cars. Each day ICE cars catch on fire - many while being operated, but also ones that are just parked in a garage. Yet perfection is expected out of Telsa. I don't own stock, and I don't own a Tesla or have any particular reason to defend Tesla (besides the fact that I think they seem to be one of the few auto manufactures making serious advancements), but I can easily recognize this strange bias against Tesla that does not seem warranted.
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I can easily recognize this strange bias against Tesla that does not seem warranted.
Some theories:
1. There is a huge short position against Tesla. [nasdaq.com] This invites subterfuge and FUD.
2. TSLA has achieved the 'Trump effect', where "Two Scoops!" [duckduckgo.com] frivolous reporting generates clicks and advertising revenue. In the pattern of 'if it bleeds it leads', negative news is perhaps more easily construed than positive news.
3. There exists contrarians who would take a shit on a masterful artwork, just so they can distinguish themselves and garner attention. Tesla and by extension Musk isn't above criticism
Auto-Pilot Crashes (Score:2)
Call me old fashioned, but how about people just drive while they drive?
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Call me old fashioned, but how about people just drive while they drive?
Because most people don't drive for the sake of driving. It is usually considered wasted time, when one would rather be preoccupied with something else. I know I'd rather be reading when stuck in traffic, than watching for car in front of me to inch forward so I can inch forward too.
Perhaps you mean how about people just drive, and not use driver assist technologies until autonomous driving is fully matured? Tech needs its early adopters. The risks involved seem much less exceptional when taking into consid
Over 57K U.S. vehicle fires every year (Score:2)
A couple of years ago, one of my uncles was killed in his above garage office when an ICE parked in his garage caught fire and the fire progressed so fast that it overheated a nearby propane tank that exploded before anyone knew there was a fire. The theory is that the explosion knocked him out after which he died of smoke inhalation before rescuers arrived.
Knowing this and having experienced two vehicle fires while simply driving down the road in my lifetime, I figured it is not uncommon and looked up some
Rubbish (Score:2)
The only way for "Tesla to... succeed in our goal of helping make the world environmentally sustainable" is to go out of business. Biofuels are and always will be the only carbon negative option. Want to guess how many Teslas will still be running in 20 years? Guess how many people who buy 8-10 year old cars have $5k laying around to replace their battery packs?
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Biofuels are and always will be the only carbon negative option.
Name one then, and I'll point to CO2 emissions from externalized factors, such as fertilizer or processing.
Internal combustion and mechanical transmission will always be a Rube Goldberg solution compared to the elegance and efficiency of electrical storage and electric motors. Go to your nearest Walmart parking lot and take a good long look at the surface, and notice the streams and estuaries that rainwater is discharged into. Then maybe realize that even if ICE was powered by unicorn farts it still would b
CFO will now personally review all expenses going (Score:2)
This same sort of communication comes out routinely at my current place of employment. Usually around travel and expense accounts, neither of which I use more than once a year at best. What I find funny about this is that they keep escalating the 'reviews' to higher and higher persons of title. How is it simply not the case that someone runs a query on the travel expenses for a given period. Pulls out the top 10 and berates those abusers never to do it again or their fired. Instead it's a weird passiv
Every single one? (Score:2)
...he and their CFO will now personally review all expenses going forward in a new "hardcore" attempt to control expenses, calling it "the only way for Tesla to become financially sustainable...
1.There is a zero-point-zero percent chance that he and their CFO will 'personally review all expenses'. This has to be targeted at truly stupid investors that don't realize how large a company like Tesla is.
2. If this is the ONLY way to become financially sustainable, then your company is screwed.
3. You don't trust the people below your to properly review expenses? You are screwed. And suck at hiring people.
4. I thought Tesla maybe had a chance to become a real, profitable company going forward w
SSDD (Score:2)
Do I really have to repeat myself?
Auto fire comparison (Score:2)
I wonder how EV accident-related fires compare with automobile fires from autos with tanks full of extremely combustible gasoline? More? Less? Hmmm... /s
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No traditional automotive company is environmentally sustainable. No fossil fueled cars can be environmentally sustainable ever. That is when we are talking about fossil fuel driven cars. On the other hand, fossil fuel driven trolleys/buses/cars are not environmentally sustainable as there is fossil fuel.
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It's still of interest and worth reporting on though, just as the BMW story was.
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Tesla claims a lot of things.
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By the stats (300k Tesla's sold), that would give you about 200 Tesla fires worldwide.
That's not inconceivable to have happened and just not been reported, but that's not what the article says.
BATTERY fires are like fuel tanks spontaneously catching fire. That might be because of tampering with the vehicle, but more likely some manufacturing fault.
Battery fires make the news. Bog-standard arson doesn't. There's a reason for that. The first is preventable.
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Nobody is replacing fossil fuels with batteries. Batteries in EVs are the equivalent of the tank, not the fuel.
ICEs incur over 57,000 fires per year in the U.S. alone, many of which are not the result of a collision. This is nothing new, and it is uncertain as of yet whether EVs improve on the situation or not though the statistics seem to lean towards an improvement.